pre-90s born "mild" Aspies - would you be dx as a

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dougn
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11 Jul 2011, 12:03 am

No, but only because of parental interference.

But having been born when I was (1988) I would have been diagnosed around age 12 were it not for that. If I'd been born 10 years later I would have been diagnosed at age < 4 were it not for that.



marshall
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11 Jul 2011, 1:06 am

I was diagnosed PDD-NOS way back in 1985. My parents were more educated than most for that time (both got MS degrees in social work) and knew something was up with me. I might not have been diagnosed had I been born to different parents. Perhaps my parents would have just beat the s**t out of me for being an overly picky eater, having meltdowns, obsessions, sensory issues, etc...



Verdandi
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11 Jul 2011, 1:08 am

I wasn't diagnosed with anything primarily because I was kept away from psychiatrists and psychologists. I do often wonder what would have happened if I had seen someone for a real evaluation.



SammichEater
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11 Jul 2011, 1:18 am

MakaylaTheAspie wrote:
Still pretty much a kid here, but even back when I was younger my mother could tell I was different. I would have gone to a shrink, only my dad pretty much inhailed all of our money. Now my mom has a good paying job, a husband that cares, and a nice house for her two teenage daughters. (Me, and my 13 year old sister.)


Yup, pretty much the same for me. My parents could tell that I was different, but because I didn't have any problems with school nothing was done about it. Now that I'm older and the symptoms have become more obvious, I was going to be taken to a shrink, but I decided against it. Now that I know about AS, I wish I had gone. It would really have helped, but no, I had to be arrogant and think that nothing was wrong. So yeah, I've still gone under the radar screen, but that is one thing I've always excelled at. :)


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Buck-oh
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11 Jul 2011, 3:04 am

raisedbyignorance wrote:
My parents would still be in denial, regardless of how I would've been diagnosed. In fact, recently I learned that my family had been in complete denial as to why I was severely harassed and ostracized by my classmates in Catholic School all these years. They thought I was being discriminated for being non-Catholic. Little did they know that ones of my biggest bullies at one of the schools was a non-Catholic. Religion had nothing to do with my discrimination! It had everything to do with showing the obvious signs of not being a socially and mentally normal teenager. I still cannot understand how people could still be completely oblivious to the fact that I'm autistic even in a world where autism is gaining more awareness. I show the obvious signs everytime I'm out in public and people aren't afraid to point them out to me. The problem is that they can't put two and two together.

It makes me think it wouldn't have made any difference. It took my high school counselor my entire high school experience to come to the conclusion that I maybe autistic. You would think she would've picked up on something when I came crying to her office on my very first day of freshman year (and my very first day in a completely new school district to worsen things) because I was freaking out over not having anyone to sit with at lunch. Instead it took a senior year breakdown of refusing to apply for colleges and pissing off the choir and speech teachers to finally accomplish what should've been done when I was a child. I'm bitter. Yeah, I'm starting to really believe it would not have made a difference considering how slow and oblivious everyone was to realizing that I was different.


That's pretty awful that the school allowed the bullying to get that bad. Smaller class sizes and a more close knit relationship between classmates in parochial school actually helped me adjust for the far bigger and more predatory public school environment. Learning social skills with the same 25 people over an 8 year period gave me a safe trial-and-error period, and the uniforms at least protected me from making some serious peer fashion mistakes (which I didn't realize until I entered the public school system). As cruel as we believe kids can be, my classmates loved to hassle me, but they were also pretty good about backing off when things went too far.



Jellybean
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11 Jul 2011, 3:11 am

I think I would have been diagnosed with autism rather than AS if I was a kid now. I didn't speak very much except to certain people. I lined toys up for hours, span wheels on cars, had poor imaginative play. Mum did take me to the doctor but the doctor just laughed at her when she said I had been suffering from panic attacks. Mum couldn't face going back to be humiliated again. It wasn't until my teen years that things took a real turn for the worse though and people started to notice.


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dougn
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11 Jul 2011, 3:41 am

marshall wrote:
My parents were more educated than most for that time (both got MS degrees in social work) and knew something was up with me.

I think the fact that my mother "knew the system" actually helped keep me from being diagnosed. (In other words, someone who knows what they're doing can better manipulate things to go their way, if they want to.) I will grant that that is probably pretty unusual though.



peterd
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11 Jul 2011, 3:46 am

I had a variety of physical problems as a child, and didn't play at all well with my peers. Fortunately, I changed schools often enough to stay ahead of recognition, and around seventeen I walked away from home and education. It was the sixties then, and one could do that.

Yes, diagnosis was a good chance, and with it my life might have been a lot different.



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11 Jul 2011, 10:30 am

I remember a lot of the kids who were in my special education classes with me were in my kindergarden class I also remember most of the weird kids in the gifted classes was in my kindergarden class as well. I am thinking they put all the wierd kids in the same kindergarden class to monitor them better. I think when they tested us for kindergarden classes they spotted my strangeness right off the bat. So I am assuming if the Asperger's Syndrome was around in 1975 I would have been noticed pretty quickly.


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johnsmcjohn
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11 Jul 2011, 11:07 am

"Developmentally disabled" I was sent to "special" classes in kindergarten because I didn't color in the lines and I never cut paper straight. Although 25 years later I can't remember if I couldn't or simply chose not to. But being labeled as defective pretty much stayed with me to this day.



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11 Jul 2011, 11:38 am

I don't think I would have been diagnosed as anything. Not because I didn't have a lot of differences to my classmates, but because my parents are both quite 'odd', and they think I am pretty normal. I'm fairly certain my father has Asperger's. And my mother is diagnosed with Manic Depression.

It would only be if my school decided to push the issue that anything would happen. Schools in the UK in the 80s had little awareness of these sorts of issues. Even though I was bullied frequently, and had a large amount of time off school with what would now be called school phobia, my school never contacted my parents about this. There were terms when I attended only one third of the time, and nothing was done. Maybe if I went to school today they would have actually talked to my parents about my difficulties.

It wasn't until I went to university that health professionals began to give me various labels, even when I only went for physical health concerns such as glandular fever, I ended up with a psychiatric label.



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11 Jul 2011, 11:51 am

I was just odd.


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wavefreak58
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11 Jul 2011, 11:58 am

I entered grade school in 1963. Unless you were foaming at the mouth, there was very little psychiatric intervention at that time. In some ways I was lucky. Had I been noticed by the system, I would have probably been given first generation anti-psychotics. Those were pretty nasty drugs that caused permanent brain changes (damage?) and side effects.

It's a mixed bag. I wish I had known then what I know now. But back then nobody else knew either. But even then I'm not sure it would have helped. My parents were quite toxic.


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11 Jul 2011, 11:59 am

I just got yelled at. Then I discovered sociology-psychology , girlfriend , weights and martial arts.

I still get yelled at but at least I know why and can explain to the people yelling why they are yelling and they usually stop yelling.

There was also some physical violence from teachcers , but to let you know how fast attitudes ( to anything) can change this was only 30 Years ago and hitting kids with standard issue implements like canes, shoes and belts seems like something out of the dark ages now. ( thye used to throw chalk board erasers at you as well)

The only criticism I have is schools are a lot more noisy now then they were 30 years ago and this is probably
not good for some AS. Fortunately they seem to have have done away with trolleys which scrape and squeek on tarmac- we used to get fee school milk that part- turned to warm cheese in summer, and it came on a squeky trolly. Milk was good, trolly not, not having milk in schools is nothing to do with negative stimulus noise policy but one that came in to save money. Cold freesh milk drunk through a straw ( you got a straw each time) is superb.



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11 Jul 2011, 2:42 pm

While I was going through school, Hans Asperger was unknown to English-speaking people, so Asperger's Syndrome was not a valid diagnosis at that time. Asperger's notes were translated into English while I was in high school, and AS was officially declared a valid diagnosis in the year I graduated college. Needless to say, I was never diagnosed.

While I was in the second through fourth grades I was visiting the school therapist in her resource room almost daily. Everyone around me could tell I wasn't completely stable, but the school psychologists had no idea what was wrong with me or what to do about it. I often did abnormal things without realizing it, and would deny these events happened because I couldn't remember them.

I saw only one psychologist outside of the school system, and then only saw him for twenty visits, because that was all my health insurance would allow before my mother would have to pay full price for the sessions. Almost immediately he theorized I might have autism, but quickly discounted it because I didn't exhibit many of the signs of Kanner's Syndrome (classic autism). I was seeing this psychologist while I was in the third grade, I think, when my AS symptoms were at their peak, so I believe a correct diagnosis could have been made at that time. He seemed to know his stuff. - LJS


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